I took a taxi, and drove to the corner of that street, where I found a dense crowd observing the affair as far as they dared peer round the angle of the walls from adjoining streets. Heedless at the moment of danger, which seemed to me ridiculous, I stood boldly opposite Sidney Street and looked down its length of houses. Immediately in front of me four soldiers of one of the Guards’ regiments lay on their stomachs, protected from the dirt of the road by newspaper “sandwich” boards, firing their rifles at a house halfway down the street. Another young Guardsman, leaning against a wall, took random shots at intervals while he smoked a woodbine. As I stood near him, he winked and said, “What a game!”
It was something more than a game. Bullets were flicking off the wall like peas, plugging holes into the dirty yellow brick, and ricocheting fantastically. One of them took a neat chip out of a policeman’s helmet, and he said, “Well, I’ll be blowed!” and laughed in a foolish way. It was before the war, when we learned to know more about the meaning of bullets. Another struck a stick on which a journalistic friend of mine was leaning in an easy, graceful way. His support and his dignity suddenly departed from him.
“That’s funny!” he said, seriously, as he saw his stick neatly cut in half at his feet.
A cinematograph operator, standing well inside Sidney Street, was winding his handle vigorously, quite oblivious of the whiz of bullets which were being fired at a slanting angle from the house, which seemed to be the target of the prostrate Guardsmen.
A large police inspector, of high authority, shouted a command to his men.
“What’s all that nonsense? Clear the people back! Clear ’em right back! We don’t want a lot of silly corpses lying round.”
A cordon of police pushed back the dense crowd, treading on the toes of those who would not move fast enough.
I found myself in a group of journalists.
“Get back there!” shouted the police.